


Bad Feeling...Happy Ending.

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Fights, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Near Death Experiences, Protective Eliot Spencer, Stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 04:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: Eliot offers to help Quinn on what should have been a by-the-book ransom drop.  Not surprisingly, things don't go as planned.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musingmidge77](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musingmidge77/gifts).



> Wait - you mean I get to put Eliot in the hospital, so long as I put him back together at the end?
> 
> Sign. Me. Up.
> 
> Drawn from your first prompt: 1. Love hurt/comfort. The sick part of me does like hurt Eliot…as long as he’s put back together. ;) Would like to see a fic where Quinn and Eliot are working together and Quinn has to help Eliot when he gets hurt.
> 
> Hope you like the results!

K and R. Kidnap and ransom. It was supposed to be a simple trade-off: an obscene amount of money for the ambassador’s only child. The only reason Eliot was even on the scene was that he’d been in the neighborhood, and Quinn had confessed to “a bad feeling” about the drop.

 _A bad feeling. Guy’s a fucking psychic_ , Eliot thought as his body finally registered that he’d been stabbed. Lunging at his attacker, he landed two solid blows to the head, before managing to sweep the man’s feet out from under him. Pivoting, Eliot tried to reach down and finish him off, but pain and vertigo dropped him to his knees.

He wasn’t going to make his rendezvous with the team in Singapore.  
***********************  
“Fuck,” Quinn breathed as Eliot dropped – it was the first moment he realized that his fellow hitter had been hurt. Keeping a weather eye on their prize – a six year old girl named Aliya, who miraculously hadn’t completely fallen to pieces yet – he lashed out at the nearest available target and snagged a Glock for himself. Six carefully placed shots later, and he and Aliya were the only ones left standing in the grimy alley.

Mercifully they weren’t the only ones still breathing. “Eliot!” Quinn called, shoving the gun in his belt and racing to his friend’s side. Eliot hadn’t gone completely down, but he was curled in on himself and at first all Quinn could see was blood. “What happened?”

“Stabbed,” Eliot managed through gritted teeth. “Feels barbed. Did…did we get the girl?”

Startled by the question, Quinn glanced up and saw Aliya standing where he’d left her. “Stay there, sweetheart,” he called. “We’ll get you back with your daddy real soon!”

Eliot chuckled, but it was a wet, pain-filled sound. “You do know she probably doesn’t speak English, right?”

Swearing under his breath, Quinn locked eyes with the little girl again and called, “Qëndrojnë atje! Daddy po vjen!” Shifting his focus back to Eliot, Quinn stripped off his close-fitting black t-shirt. “Let me pack this around the blade.” They couldn’t withdraw the knife if the blade was barbed, or carried some kind of gut-hook; they would end up causing more damage than the person who’d stabbed Eliot in the first place. “Do you think you can get all the way down?”

His friend grimaced. “Think I better try – otherwise I’m about to go down the hard way.”

Gripping him by the upper arm, Quinn reached in under Eliot’s curled torso and wrapped his shirt around the hilt of the knife. “Ready?”

Eliot laughed again – Quinn tried to ignore how weak it sounded. “No, but let’s get it over with.”  
*********************************  
He was having trouble detaching from the pain. Eliot had only been stabbed a handful of times in his life, but each one had been motivation to never go through the experience again. The fact that he couldn’t get the knife out on his own, or with Quinn’s assistance left him battling an almost crippling nausea.

Once he was on the ground, Quinn packed his shirt more tightly around the blade. His hands were steady, but there was no way for him not to jostle the knife. Mindful of the traumatized child on the scene, Eliot tried not to cry out every time he felt the dagger’s barbs press against his insides, but after the third time tears streamed steadily from his eyes.

“Hang in there,” Quinn said. His right hand rested against Eliot’s chest – with his left hand, he was pulling out his phone. “Or if you want to pass out, that wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. I’m gonna get help here as quick as I can.”

Eliot nodded to show that he understood. He would have happily taken Quinn’s suggestion about passing out, but his body didn’t seem to want to cooperate. _Nate…Sophie…Hardison…Parker…_ One by one, the faces of his family drifted across his awareness. _Wait for me._ He was going to have to make sure Quinn contacted Nate – the idea that they might not wait until he could be there to protect him made him almost as sick as his wound.  
*************************************  
The girl kept inching closer, but there was nothing Quinn could do to stop her that wouldn’t make things worse. His Albanian wasn’t good enough to manage much more than he had, and he knew he couldn’t deal with a crying child and Eliot possibly bleeding to death in front of him. Aliya’s presence did keep him from losing his composure with the ambassador’s people when he finally got someone on the phone who would listen to his demands for medical assistance, so he supposed that was something.

_So much blood…_

“They’re coming,” he said, feeling Eliot’s fingers brush the back of his hand. “You hang on, you hear me?” Quinn swallowed, trying to convince himself that those weren’t tears blurring his vision. “We’ll have that thing out of you in no time.” He tried to smile as he met Eliot’s pale eyes, but it was obvious the other hitter had already figured out how deeply full of shit he was.

“Call Nate,” Eliot rasped. “Promise me.”

Quinn’s answering nod was too quick. “As soon as you’re out of the woods…” His voice cut off with a yelp, as Eliot’s fingers – suddenly much stronger than he expected – dug into his flesh.

“We…we have a job. They can’t go in unprotected. Promise me.”

Sobering, Quinn nodded again. “If they won’t wait, I’ll take your place.” His voice was as steady and reassuring as he could make it, and he kept solid eye contact. “I promise.” God knew he owed Eliot at least that much.

It was enough. Nodding, Eliot’s eyes closed, and his hand went slack. Only the continued rise and fall of his chest kept Quinn from openly panicking. _Talking to Nate’s going to be hard enough without you dying on me._ He dashed the back of his free hand across his eyes – momentarily clearing his vision again.

“He got hurt.”

Startled, Quinn realized that Aliya had moved close enough to be standing on the other side of Eliot’s prone figure. Not wanting to traumatize her further, he softened his expression and nodded at her. “Yes, he did.”

Eyes large, she moved around Eliot, until she was standing in arm’s reach of Quinn. “Does he need a band-aid?”

It took Quinn a second longer than it should have, but when he had what he thought was the right translation, it surprised a genuine smile out of him. Raising his free arm, he beckoned the girl closer. She came to him without hesitation, letting him hug her to his side. “I called your Daddy,” he said, kissing her hair. “He’s bringing help.”

Reaching out a tiny hand, she touched Eliot’s arm. “He can use my turtle band-aids,” she said, looking up at Quinn again. “They always make me feel better.”  
**************************************  
Eliot hated every aspect of waking up in the hospital, but this was one of those times where he had to stop for a moment and be grateful that he was waking up at all. His hand twitched towards his wound, as he tried to reconstruct his memories of what happened. His entire torso felt thick and numb, which he supposed was normal after getting a knife cut out of his body.

“They had to take your gallbladder.”

Confused, Eliot craned his neck until he saw that Nate – not Quinn – was in the chair next to his bed. “You took some damage to the liver too – they’re still trying to figure out how much.” The mastermind got to his feet, moving until Eliot could watch him without putting further strain on his body. “I sent Quinn to get some food. Your charge nurse told me he hasn’t left your side since they brought you in.”

Eliot tried to speak, swallowed, and then glanced at the cup and pitcher by the bed. Catching the unspoken request immediately, Nate poured some water into the cup, then steadied it as Eliot drank. When he’d drunk his fill he asked the question uppermost on his mind. “How long?”

“Three days,” Nate said, his expression as serious as Eliot had ever seen it. “The doctors said that if Quinn hadn’t been with you, you would have bled out in that alley. He apparently raised all kinds of hell with the ambassador’s people too, making sure that you got the best medical care diplomatic status could buy.”

 _Memory of Quinn’s face, just before he’d finally passed out…_ The other hitter had been genuinely scared, although he’d been trying his best to hold it together, and Eliot couldn’t remember thinking at the time that he was over-reacting. “What about the job?” he asked, not willing to think too much about what had almost happened.

Some of the tension left Nate’s features, but Eliot wasn’t necessarily reassured. “The others are in a holding pattern, until we know for sure what’s going on with you.” He put his hand over Eliot’s and squeezed. “Quinn told me you were worried about us charging in without you.”

“I also told him I’d step in for you, if it came to it.”

Eliot turned and saw a much less put-together Quinn than he was used to seeing, standing just inside the doorway to his room.  
******************************************  
His world was right for the first time in days. Quinn felt the muscles of his stomach unclench as he saw Eliot awake and alert, if not entirely pain free. “I meant it too,” he added, moving to stand on the opposite side of Eliot’s bed from Ford. “Least I can do for you, under the circumstances.”

Mastermind and hitter exchanged a quick glance. “I’ll leave you two to catch up,” Ford said finally. Coming around the bed, he clasped Quinn briefly on the shoulder, before leaving the room.

“You look a lot better than the last time I saw you,” Quinn said, once they were alone. Eliot huffed out a quiet chuckle.

“You mean I look better than bleeding to death in an alley?” he asked. His pale eyes sought out Quinn’s. “Thanks. I mean it. I owe you big on this one.”

Suddenly uncomfortable, Quinn shrugged. “I was surprised at how fast Ford got here,” he said, groping for a less emotionally charged topic. “Pretty sure he grabbed the first available flight out of Singapore to have made it this fast.”

Quinn could have sworn Eliot looked pleased. “I didn’t expect him to do that,” he said, in spite of the story his expression told. “I am going to suggest he take you up on your offer,” he added. “The job’s important, and if what Nate told me is true, I’m not going to be in any shape to look after them for a while.”

“Man, whatever you need,” Quinn said. “You’re going to just have to do one thing for me first.”

“What?” Eliot asked.

“Give me your secret for dealing with Hardison.”

The other hitter laughed, then winced, pressing a hand to his stomach. “Wow – let’s not let me do that again.” He paused, brow furrowing in confusion as he felt the shape of a band aid over the traditional gauze and tape of a hospital dressing. “What the..?”

Shifting his blankets aside, Eliot craned his neck to see a child’s Ninja Turtle band aid placed carefully on top of the larger white bandage. He looked up at Quinn, only to see the other hitter grinning. “Apparently the kind of turtle band aids they make here have magic healing abilities.”

When Eliot raised a questioning eyebrow, Quinn’s hands immediately went up in a gesture of surrender. “Hey brother – I will take a lot of risks, but given that you’re here and breathing, far be it from me to argue with the logic of a six year old!”


End file.
